


Give Me Grace

by tiredandgay



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Use, F/F, Homophobia, Human AU, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, conversion therapy au, no magic, the miseducation of cameron post AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22248787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredandgay/pseuds/tiredandgay
Summary: Beau's world comes crashing down when her worst nightmare becomes reality - her parents have found out who she really is.A Miseducation of Cameron Post (conversion therapy) AU.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 15
Kudos: 82





	1. Don't Give Me Up

**Author's Note:**

> Massive tw for homophobia  
> Fic title from: I'm Born to Run by American Authors  
> Chapter title from: Not About Angels by Birdy

_March, 1989_

_He stared steadfastly out the window, focussed on the pale moon hanging in the sky. It was raining; the stars hidden by dark heavy clouds, but the silvery moonlight shone defiantly through, painting the earth in its radiant, muted light despite the encroaching storm. He willed the clouds to drift by so he could gaze at that shining pearl all night - perhaps, if he looked hard enough, he would be blessed with the otherworldy magic it possessed, will himself somewhere else, be by the side of another with moonlight in his eyes._

_The dazzlingly bright light of the naked bulb above his head threatened to break his concentration, its reflection in the window a poor imitation of the incandescent moon._

_The harsh buzz of the clippers was all that broke the oppressive silence surrounding him, his long hair falling limply at his feet. He hunched further into himself._

_“Oh for Pete’s sake, sit up. Don’t make this harder than it has to be, boy.” Her hand dug into his shoulder, pulling him back into the chair. He swallowed thickly, as one lock of hair landed softly on his wrist. His eyes were drawn from the inky sky to the ring on his thumb; plain silver, with an inscription on the inside that only he and one other person knew about._ Love you to the moon and back. _He twisted it around on his thumb, blinking back tears._

_The buzzing stopped and the claw-like grip on his skull finally relented. He reached a trembling hand up to palm across his freshly shorn scalp, his head falling into his arms. He sat like that for what seemed like forever but also no time at all, until he heard a sigh echo around the room._

_“I’m sorry to have to do this. It’s not your fault that you are this way. Your parents didn’t raise you properly and I’m sorry that I didn’t step in sooner. But you can fight this, child, I know you can.” He lifted his head and saw her kneeling in front of him, looking as earnest as he’d ever seen. “I’ve pulled some strings to get you into this programme. They don’t normally accept people this young, or with your_ preferences, _so I’ve really put my neck out for you.”_

_Her stare turned hard, and she gripped his hand, stilling the twisting motion of the ring. “Don’t let me down. God willing, this will finally fix you.” She rose, tugging the curtains closed with a sharp flick of her wrist, just as the stormclouds enshrouded the moon in a cloak so thick it thrust the earth beneath into darkness._

_*_

September, 1992

Beau stared blankly out the window, watching the deep green forest flash by. She had been sat like this, steadfastly refusing to look at her father, for the 7 hours it had taken for them to get this far. Just a few minutes from her new home. She glanced at the worn pamphlet screwed up in her hands, looking at it but not really seeing it. A group of smiling teenagers in matching uniforms stared back at her, posed in front of a log cabin. It would look like it could be an ad for a boring but innocent Summer camp, were it not for the writing in curly white print across the top. _Christ’s Sanctuary: Path of Redemption for Wayward Souls._

Beau scoffed under her breath, quiet enough that only she could hear it. The pamphlet described ‘wayward souls’ as people with sin in their hearts, people who had turned their backs on God and Christ and all things good - people like her. It went on to say that it wasn’t too late, that she could find her way back to Christ if she turned away from sin. She knew it was all bollocks, and was fairly certain her father knew it was too. Yet here she was, curled up in the passenger seat of his fancy new Mercedes, pretending to be utterly interested in the trees flashing by, hoping, desperately, that if she looked at the forest hard enough she could lose herself in it.

Her father cleared his throat, sudden and loud in the quiet of the car, and Beau instinctively pulled her knees tighter, closer to her chest, trying to make herself smaller; small enough he wouldn’t be able to see her, to talk to her, to hurt her the way she knew he was going to.

“Beauregard,” he began, voice rough from disuse, “I hope you know that we’re sending you here for your own good. Your mother and I, we just want what’s best for you. Do you understand?”

When it became clear she wasn’t going to respond, wasn’t even going to look at him, he sighed, tightening his grip on the steering wheel imperceptibly (but Beau noticed; she always noticed).

“What’s been happening, what you’ve been doing...it’s wrong. You know that, don’t you?” Beau tucked her hands up into the sleeve of her jumper, brow furrowed as if it was taking all her concentration to carry out that one simple act. “This place, it’s going to help you. Straighten you out, I just know it.”

And she couldn’t help herself, somehow, all the frustration that had been building for the past 7 hours - for the past few days, really, ever since that night - burst forth. “Oh yeah, it’s gonna straighten me right out, dad. Yeah, I’m gonna sit in a circle with a bunch of other fags, and we’re all gonna pray the gay away, yeah sounds like a fucking great plan.”

She turned to face him, then, with a fight in her eyes and fists clenched where they were hidden beneath her sleeves, and she relished the way his jaw ticked with anger. But he didn’t take his eyes off the road, hadn’t made eye contact with her for days, and she was both immensely grateful for that and sad at the same time. 

“Do not use that kind of language with me, Beauregard.”

“What, fuck? Or is it the other f word you don’t like? You don’t seem to have such a problem with it when it’s you who’s saying it.”

Silence fell over them again, and Beau swung her feet up onto the dashboard in a position that would be uncomfortable, were she not so determined to keep them there, where she knew it would enrage her father further. They were currently in what she liked to call the-calm-after-the-storm, the period after her and her father had fought, tension building between them slow and steady, rising to a crescendo where she would shout, and her father would yell, and inevitably he would push it too far. Then the calm would come, they would tiptoe around one another, neither willing to apologise or even acknowledge what had passed between them, eventually pretending nothing had happened and that everything was fine again. They’d been doing this dance for years, but never had there been such a devastating storm as this, or such lasting consequences. 

Beau was grateful, as she often was, for the calm, which she believed was brought on from her father’s guilt over losing his temper. Whether the guilt came because he felt bad for hurting her, or embarrassed that he’d let her get under his skin, that she’d cracked his carefully constructed cool facade, Beau didn’t know; but she was grateful all the same. It meant she could get away with saying things like that, pushing him to that precipice, but knowing he wouldn’t allow himself to indulge his temper so soon after their last fight. 

She returned to staring out the window satisfied that, at least for now, she’d avoided a conversation with him. He wouldn’t have anything new to say, anyway, they would simply be repeating the same row they’d been having for days. Ever since that fateful night.

Despite her best efforts to keep her mind carefully, deliberately blank; utilising all the meditation techniques Dairon had taught her, Beau felt her mind drift back, back to the night where her life had changed - perhaps forever. The night that she regretted, perhaps more than anything. 

*

_Beau exhaled slowly, passing the joint along to Vorsah. Their fingers brushed as she did so, and Beau found herself focusing on Vorsah’s fingers, marveling at how slender they were, as the smoke she exhaled curled around them._

_They were sitting in a circle, on the roof of an old barn on the edges of town. It was a mild night, a chill in the air hinting at a cold Autumn to come, but with warmth washing over them from the still-setting sun. The sound of crickets echoed up from the sheaves of wheat in the field below, and the air smelt tangy, as though rain was on the horizon. Feeling appropriately high, Beau abandoned their little circle and made her way to the edge of the roof, sidestepping a jagged hole, pausing to stare into the twilight of the barn below. She perched on the edge of the roof, with her legs swinging out over the edge, the corrugated metal of the roof below cool against the back of her thighs._

_She stared out at the spectrum of colour the sky had become, wisps of light grey clouds in the distance that brought the promise of future rain; deep blue fading to purple, giving way to pretty pinks and delicate oranges._

_Beau tilted her head back, content to watch the sky come alive above her as the stars woke from their daytime slumber. A warmth appeared along the side of her left arm and thigh, a warmth that had nothing to do with the waning sun and everything to do with Vorsah._

_Beau concentrated on keeping her eyes on the sky, trying to stop her body from tensing up. It had been a while since she’d done anything with a girl - hadn’t so much as kissed one since that Keg girl from her summer wrestling team had gone back home to Zadash. As such, Beau’s nerves were hyper alert, and having someone as pretty, and kind, and amazing as Vorsah sitting so close had her all on edge._

_Vorsah didn’t say anything, and Beau watched the clouds drift closer, and the dark close in._

_There was a sharp bark of laughter from one of the boys behind her, and Beau could feel Vorsah’s eyes on the side of her face._

_She felt a blush spread along the back of her neck, and hoped the light was dim enough that no-one would notice. “What?”_

_Vorsah placed a hand on the warm skin of Beau’s wrist, and she looked over just in time to see Vorsah’s easy smile grow. Her hair shone as though it were spun with gold, and the freckles on her cheeks reminded Beau of the constellations above her. God, she was beautiful. “Want to get out of here?”_

_*_

_Beau carefully shut the door behind her. There was no-one else in the house she could have disturbed, but a delicate silence hung in the air, and she was reluctant to break it. Vorsah was sat, cross-legged, on her bed, head tilted as she examined Beau. It was the same look she had at school, when confronted with a particularly challenging equation, and Beau’s treacherous neck flushed under the attention. She rubbed her hand over the hot skin, and hovered hesitantly by the door._

_After moments of silence, Beau began to inspect the room around her, as if she hadn’t lived there her whole life. This was the place she felt most like herself - the calming light blue of the walls; the Hole poster she’d hung up despite her father’s disapproval; cassette tapes carelessly discarded everywhere; a bookshelf stacked with VHS tapes and a variety of sports trophies. It was weird, to have Vorsah in the middle of her space, and Beau busied herself with popping one of her favourite mix tapes into the cassette player. Friday I’m In Love by The Cure drifted quietly out of the speaker, and Beau hummed along under her breath, clinging onto the last vestiges of her high._

_“I didn’t know you played netball.” And suddenly Vorsah was beside her, running her delicate fingers over the inscription of one of Beau’s old trophies._ Most Valuable Player, Year 7 Netball Championships 1989.

_“I, uh, had to quit a couple years back. I was a little too...aggressive, so my coach recommended I try something else. I tried rugby for a while but, decided team sports weren’t really my thing. Coach suggested wrestling.” Vorsah just continued to stare, and Beau shrugged, self-conscious that she was talking too much. “I do kickboxing too, which I’m better at, but there isn’t really a high school league-”_

_Vorsah’s hand was on Beau’s cheek, and she didn’t know how, or when, but suddenly they were kissing, and Vorsah was pulling Beau toward the bed and on top of her, and Beau’s vest was flung onto the floor. And then Vorsah pulled back, breathless, lips swollen from kissing._

_“I’ve never done anything like this before. With someone like you.”_

_Beau knew what that meant. “Yeah? You wanna stop?”_

_She and Vorsah attended the same church - Hell, they’d met at the youth group, Aftershock Youth Ministry, which was just as embarrassing and depressing as it sounded. Beau wouldn’t be surprised if this was Vorsah’s little experimentation, a shameful little tryst she could pray away next Sunday. Keg had warned her, several times, never to fall for a straight girl, but it still surprised and annoyed Beau that she’d gone ahead and done it anyway._

_But Vorsah’s hand was on her arm, stopping her from pulling her top back on. “No. No I don’t want to stop.”_

_And they were kissing again, and Beau was trailing hot, wet kisses down Vorsah’s neck, across her chest, over her fluttering ribs, around her belly button, the jutting lines of her hips - and then Beau stopped, one hand on the button of the other girls shorts._

_Vorsah was looking down at Beau, her hair mussed and eyes hooded, and she nodded slightly. “Keep going.” And Beau did, she went further than she’d ever gone before, pulling Vorsah’s shorts slowly off her legs, kissing up one thigh and down the other, bringing Vorsah to the edge and past it._

_Beau sat up, straddling Vorsah’s thighs, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, wanting badly to kiss her but unsure if she should. And then the other girl smiled up at her, and Beau bent down and kissed her anyway._

_“I don’t really know, I mean, I know you’ve done this with other girls but I haven’t and I’m not sure...if I could do that for you too.”_

_“I’ve never done that with other girls,” said Beau, letting her hair down and re-tying it, enjoying the look in Vorsah’s eyes as she did so, “Like I’ve kissed them, and whatever, but nothing like that.”_

_“Okay.” And it looked like that was enough, as Vorsah began to lean up to kiss her again, her hand trailing to the button of Beau’s shorts -_

_And a door slammed downstairs._

_Beau shot up as though she’d been burned, jumping from the bed and pulling her top back on in one swift movement. Vorsah was still laying on the bed, propped up on her elbows and chin jutted forward, looking for all the world like she was kissing the air, which would have been comical had Beau’s heart not been in her throat._

_“Beauregard?” She could hear her mother’s too-high heels clacking against the tile floor of the porch._

_“I’ll be right down Mom!” Beau shouted in the general direction of the door, before turning back to Vorsah, who was still frozen on the bed. Beau heard her mother’s footsteps change as she walked from the tile to the wood floor of the hallway, and began her ascent up the plushly carpeted steps. “Jesus Christ, Vorsah, get dressed!” She hissed at the other girl, quickly grabbing a random array of textbooks from her desk and throwing them on the bed, sitting at the foot of the bed with a physics book in her lap, as far from the other girl as she could physically get._

_At Beau’s words Vorsah snapped out of whatever trance she’d been in, quickly sorting her appearance so she looked less like Beau had just went down on her, and more like they’d just been making out. While this still wasn’t ideal, they were rapidly running out of time, so Beau just threw her a workbook and prayed to the God she didn’t believe in that her mother wouldn’t notice._

_There was a knock at her door, three sharp raps and a last, jaunty tap, the same cheerful knock Beau had heard at her bedroom door for as long as she could remember._

_“Come in, Mom.”_

_Beau’s mother peeked her head around the door, glasses sliding down her nose as she did so, and smiled brightly at the girls. “Hello sweetheart, sorry to interrupt - oh hello Vorsah, dear, I didn’t realise you were coming over. Would you like to stay for tea?”_

_Vorsah looked like a deer in the headlights, and Beau jumped in before she could pull herself together enough to answer. “No!” Her mother frowned at her, and Beau swallowed thickly, forcing the next words out of her mouth to sound less abrupt. “No, Vorsah has to go home tonight, it’s Taco Tuesdays for you guys right?”_

_Vorsah stared at Beau as though she’d never even heard of a taco, but caught on and nodded vigorously. “Yes I was just about to leave, thank you for the kind offer though, Mrs Lionett.”_

_Then, quicker than Beau could process, Vorsah was up, grabbing her bag from the floor, shuffling awkwardly past Beau’s mother, and the sound of the door slamming closed downstairs echoed throughout the house._

_“Is she okay? That was...weird.” Beau’s mother turned her frown in the direction of the stairs Vorsah had just practically flown down. “And she lives at the edge of town right? Should I offer to give her a lift?”_

_Beau shook her head, avoiding her mother’s eyes. “No she, uh, likes the walk when the evenings get a bit cooler. So what are we eating?”_

_As Beau’s mother launched into a spiel about a new recipe she was going to try out, Beau stared down at her hands - hands that had been roaming all over Vorsah Versi’s body but 5 minutes ago. That had been a close call, and part of her couldn’t quite believe she’d gotten away with it. Maybe, for the first time in her life, talking to God had actually worked._

_*_

_Beau chucked her bike in the general direction of the garage door, cursing and wiping her bloodied hands on the front of her leggings. She’d fallen off the damn thing again when riding home from work. She had one of those shitty jobs, the kind only bored high school kids and desperate college students worked during Summer - her particular torture was delivering food for the local Chinese takeaway._

_Legs sore from her shift, and desperate for a drink (preferably of the alcoholic variety) Beau failed to notice the local vicar’s car parked next to her father’s antique Aston Martin they’d fixed up a couple years ago. Or maybe she did notice, but thought nothing of it, as her mother had been on a bit of a religious kick recently, ever since the new vicar took over from old Reverend March a few months back. Either way, Beau had no reason to think her whole world was about to come crashing down, as she barged into the house and ran through to the kitchen to down a glass of water._

_“Beauregard.” Her father’s steely voice was the first indicator that all was not as it should be. He shouldn’t have been home, Beau should have been free from him for at least another 2 days while he was away in Port Damali for a conference. “Could you come and join us in the sitting room, please?”_

_Beau paused, rolling the now empty glass between her palms. There was no doubt in her mind what had happened. They knew. Her mother had figured it out, or they’d found the old porn mag she’d stolen from Gus’ house and stashed behind her mirror, or they’d found the letters Keg had sent her, telling her all about the vast lesbian underworld of Zadash. That, or they’d found the little stash of pot she kept in an old shoe. Beau knew which one she wanted to be true, but a part of her knew she wasn’t that lucky._

_Slowly, reluctantly, Beau made her way towards the sitting room. Still hidden by the shadows of the hallway, she stole a look through the doorway. She could see Reverend Hope, sitting straight backed on the dark leather settee her mother had insisted on buying, even though it was beyond uncomfortable and clashed with the mahogany furniture. Her father stood next to him, arms crossed over his chest, his face a mask to anyone else, but filled with a familiar cool rage to those who knew to look for it._

_A small voice in the back of her head, a tempting voice that pulled at Beau’s basest desires, reminded her that she could still leave. Turn around, jump on that stupid bike, and pedal until her lungs burst and her legs bled. But she could see, just edging around the doorframe, her mother’s wiry black hair. Then someone stepped into the doorway, an unfamiliar man with a familiar, church-friendly smile, and that was it. Nowhere to run, no-one to turn to. She could only go forward._

_Swallowing, Beau stepped toward the door, still clutching that empty glass. Her eyes swept over the occupants of the room - five of them, two with dog collars and sympathetic smiles, one a face of impassive, immovable rage, and then there was her mom._

_She was hunched over, palms cradling her face. She was staring at the floor, at the garish purple carpet, but she wasn’t looking at it, not really - she was staring past it. And then she looked up, at Beau, past her, through her, eyes wet._

_And they were all looking at her, waiting for her to break the silence, and her neck flushed, but all she could do was look at her mother. Who was normally so put together, and kind, and made eye contact with everyone - even that one old homeless guy with his weird wind-up toys that everyone ignored - was currently avoiding her eyes._

_It took Beau a moment to realise where she was looking, and then a hand flew to her neck, and the heart-shaped locket that hung there. It had been a gift from her grandmother, three years ago, given to her just before she died. It was a simple silver with a tiny diamond set in the upper right corner, and the tiny pictures inside were of a younger Beau, grinning wide with her mom and grandma. The pictures were a little faded, there was a small dent in it and the delicate chain was tarnished, because Beau never took it off, never went anywhere without it. She hadn’t seen her mother cry since that day, but as she stood there, frozen in place, she watched two tears track down her mom’s cheeks. And it broke her._

_She took a further step into the room, raising her hand as though proffering peace. “Mom,” she started, unsure of what exactly she was going to say but knowing she had to say something, anything, to stop her crying, but then her father stepped in front of her._

_“Beauregard. Take a seat.” And she did, dropping into the armchair in the corner of the room, the perfect place for them to scrutinise her, take her apart with their eyes and then find her wanting. She hunched her shoulders, folding in on herself the way she did whenever her father was saying something particularly cruel, trying to fall through the floor and away from whatever this awful conversation was going to be._

_“Beauregard,” Reverend Hope said her name with more kindness than her father, and she appreciated that he at least tried to hide his disgust. “This is Reverend Clay, from Christ’s Sanctuary. You remember he came in to deliver a sermon about a month ago?”_

_Beau tore her eyes away from her mother in time to see a lazy smile stretch across Reverend Clay’s face. He was tall, and handsome in an effortless sort of way, with slicked-back blonde hair and eyes such a peculiar shade of blue they almost looked purple. Yes, Beau remembered him. As she often did when a sermon was likely to offend her, Beau had spent that Sunday morning counting the tiles on the church ceiling. She got to 1089 when Reverend Clay took to the altar, creating somewhat of a scandal when he announced that he was now going to deliver a very special sermon to Aftershock, which was exceptionally unusual as the group usually didn’t convene until after Reverend Hope had finished whatever 2-hour long spiel he had prepared. Nevertheless, the varied teens of the Church of Life followed Reverend Clay into a sideroom of the church. He was the Cool Reverend, the youngest in the Church, and sparked crushes amongst the teen girls of Aftershock as he began explaining his role at Christ’s Sanctuary. Beau found herself actually paying attention, mostly because he didn’t talk down his nose about gay people the way the other vicars did, and partly because he talked as though he was high and she wanted to work out if he was._

_His whole reason for dragging the teenagers out of their normal sermon, was to answer their questions about sexual deviancy, including a particularly personal one from one of the less appealing boys of the group._

_“Isn’t the whole reason they built that place because of you? Aren’t you one of them homos?”_

_But rather than reacting with rage, or disgust like many others in his position would have, Reverend Clay simply smiled his endlessly patient smile. “I used to live with same-sex attraction, that’s true. I struggled with it when I was a teenager. But through God and His teachings, I found my way back to the path of good. Well I was so grateful, I knew I had to give back, help people the way Jesus and those kind folks at my church helped me. So, I helped create Christ’s Sanctuary. Does anyone else have any questions?”_

_Beau had questions - so many, in fact, that she was bursting at the seams to ask them all. But she was dreadfully afraid that asking any one of them would give her away, that Reverend Clay would turn his too-kind eyes to hers and see the sexual deviance that lay there, the sudden unexpected guilt that still snuck up on her every now and again giving her away._

_Yes, Beau remembered Reverend Clay. “Hello, Beauregard.” He still spoke in that lazy drawl that reminded her of slow summers spent among the wildflowers of the meadows that bordered Kamordah. “It’s nice to meet you again. Now you don’t have to call me Reverend Clay if you don’t want to - Caduceus will do just fine.”_

_Despite herself, Beau liked him; liked that he knew that in this terrifying moment, where she had no control over what happened to her or how it would hurt, he could ease that by giving her control over something, no matter how small._

_“Now, Beauregard,” and Reverend Hope was talking now, “young Vorsah Versi and her mother visited me this morning, to give me some very disturbing news.”_

_Beau felt as though her stomach had fallen out of her, through the floor, deep into the core of the Earth where it burned and burned. Vorsah had told them. She couldn’t focus on the rest of the Reverend’s words, about how he had called her father, and together they had broken the news to her mom, who hadn’t spoken a work since. How they searched her room and found the porn, and the letters and even, laughably, the pot. Beau continued to stare at her mother, and watched her flinch as the Reverend stuttered his way through the words ‘erotic magazine’._

_And then Reverend Clay was pressing a glossy, colourful pamphlet into her hand, telling her with a sympathetic smile that it would get better, and then he and Hope left and it was just her and her parents alone, in a big empty house that suddenly felt suffocatingly small._

_*_

Beau snapped out of her daydream as the uneven, potholed road they’d been travelling down gave way to the soft, bouncy feel of pine needles, and a cluster of cabins appeared in a clearing just ahead. 

A cheerful sign announced their arrival: _Welcome to Christ’s Sanctuary. The Path of Redemption Begins Here!_

She found herself clenching her jaw, a habit she hated because she picked it up from her father, and forced her tensing body to loosen. She was here.


	2. Be Ready for the Dark Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from: Don't Wait for Us by BLOW

The car rolled to a slow stop, but Beau made no move to leave it. As soon as she opened this door, as soon as she stepped out of this car, that was it. She was trapped. Stuck here, in the middle of God knows where, with no way to escape.

For once, her father seemed sensitive to her needs, and he simply sat next to her, and together they stared out at the compound before them. 

And then her father’s door was being opened, and the bright, unmistakable flash of a camera interrupted their silence.

“Hi! Sorry if I scared you,” Beau craned her neck to see around her father, and was met with the bright grin of a short girl, around her age, with black hair tied into two ponytails at the back of her head. She bounced back from the car door, and Beau realised that she had a prosthetic leg, a shade or two lighter than her skin. “I’m Jester, I’m here to welcome you to Christ’s Sanctuary!”

Despite everything, remaining in that car with her father suddenly seemed oppressive, and Beau swung open her car door and jumped out, relishing that she could stretch out her legs after so long.

As soon as she rounded the bonnet of the car, Jester produced the photo from her camera, angling it so only Beau could see it. Her father was staring straight forward, features blank, mouth ticked slightly down, steely blue eyes blank. Behind him, slightly blurred, Beau’s head was in the process of peeking around, not quite looking directly at the camera. There was the slightest, shocked smile on her face.

“I always take a picture as soon as people get here - it’s the best moment to take it, when people are least expecting it. I just wish I could take one as soon as people see the welcome sign.” Jester sighed wistfully, tucking the photo into the pocket of her blazer.

By this point, Beau’s father had grabbed her suitcases out of the boot, and joined the girls. “Hello, Jester. This is Beauregard and I’m her father, Lucius.”

“I know who you are, it’s not every day we get a new disciple!” Jester put a hand by her mouth, stage-whispering to Beau, “That’s what we have to call the students here.” She removed her hand and began briskly walking to one of the nearby log cabins, not appearing to be slowed down in the slightest by her prosthetic. “Follow me!” 

Beau took great pleasure in the way her father was struggling to manoeuvre her suitcase through the pine needles, its little wheels getting stuck in the soft earth. She hurried to catch up to Jester, swinging her sports bag over onto her back.

The little cluster of cabins with walls of stacked, dark wood logs, sat picturesquely in a clearing, surrounded on three sides by towering firs and oaks. The side that wasn’t bordered by trees included a rocky pathway, leading down toward the shore of a shining blue lake. As they walked they passed a barn, empty stables - “Cad says we’ll be getting horses soon, hopefully before next summer!” - a chicken coop where the disciples collected eggs, a water tower, and a shed filled with canoes. It looked for all the world like a cute little summer camp, the kind of place Beau would have enjoyed as a kid, with group activities like raft building, and hiking through the forests on weekends.

She decided that, for as long as she could, she was going to pretend that that’s why she was here. To make friends and get away from shitty Kamordah for a few months, and that was all. She wasn’t here because what she was, who she was, was shameful, and disgusting, and wrong and needed to be changed. She was just here for a summer break.

Jester led them into one of the quaint log cabins, down a corridor lined with identical doors. Once inside, Beau realised that the charming face that had greeted her outside was just a facade - within the cabin the floors were cheap linoleum, the walls plywood poorly imitating wood panelling, stained a too-bright brown that bordered on orange. Jester brought them to a stop outside of a door with two simple decorations on it. One was a page of scripture, not torn from the bible but handwritten in beautiful calligraphy. Beau saw the words ‘healing’ and ‘redemption’ on it and didn’t care to inspect it any further. The other was a signed poster of the Christian rock band Atomic Opera. She could already tell her roommate was going to be a genuine, honest to God bible-thumper. Beau was in for a long few months.

“So, the doors are normally always open, we’re only allowed to close them when we’re changing or whatever.” Jester explained, shouldering the door open. “But since everyone’s in town I guess it’s okay for all the doors to be closed. Your roommate is called Cali, and she’s really nice!”

Beau inspected Cali’s side of the room as she stepped into her new cell. There was a massive corkboard on the wall, covered in a few photographs, more calligraphed pages of various scripture and poems, a poster of Orlando Magic’s mascot Stuff the Magic Dragon, and posters of more (presumably Christian) rock bands that Beau didn’t recognise. Her quilt cover was a deep green with black pillowcases and there was, oddly, a little ornament of a black dragon on her bedside table. Beau pictured Cali in her mind’s eye - tall, lanky, with the uneven tan of white Floridians, bleach blonde hair, kneeling by her bed and praying that she could fall for one of the greasy-haired men in her poster.

Noticing Beau’s inspection, Jester gave her a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, you won’t be able to decorate your wall just yet - decoration privileges won’t come for another couple months. Cad thought you guys might be hungry, so we can head into the kitchen and I can fix up some sandwiches for you maybe?”

Beau busied herself with setting up something - anything - to make her side of the room feel less like the sterile hospice bed it currently resembled. From her bag she pulled a framed photograph of her and her parents from about 7 years ago, her younger self sitting on her father’s shoulders, triumphantly holding up a netball trophy after winning the league cup. It was one of the only pictures she had where they’re all genuinely smiling and, despite everything between her and her father, it was still Beau’s favourite picture, and she placed it on her bedside table. Then she deposited some notepads, pens, her cassette player and a few mix tapes down on her desk in the corner of the room. She’d been careful to only bring unlabelled mix tapes, fairly confident in her assumption that even nice Reverend Clay wouldn’t let her keep Bad Religion’s newest album. She had been surprised that her father had let her bring any, before remembering that he knew next to nothing about her, let alone her eclectic taste in music. 

As they sat in the canteen finishing off their ham and pease pudding sandwiches, a slightly beat up blue van pulled up outside the open doors. It had the logo for Christ’s Sanctuary on the side, with the by now familiar and unwelcome slogan ‘The Path of Redemption for Wayward Souls’.

Beau watched as Reverend Clay and her fellow lost souls piled out of the van and swarmed towards her, in a rush of modest clothing and well wishes. _“It’s so nice to meet you!” - “we haven’t had a new disciple in forever!”_ and, her personal favourite - _“God has truly blessed us by bringing you here!”_

It was there, during those sickly sweet introductions, that Beau got her first look at her roommate. A tall, skinny girl, so pasty pale she was practically translucent, with long dark hair she hid behind like a curtain, was one of the last students to offer Beau an awkward hug.

“Hello,” her voice was soft, so soft Beau could barely make it out, “I’m Calianna. It’s very nice to meet you, I’ve been waiting for a roommate for a while.”

She was so starkly different to what Beau had imagined that she could hardly find it within herself to respond.

“All right everybody, let’s give Beauregard a little space. She’s had a busy day and probably just wants to get settled.” Again Beau found herself risking cramp in her neck to look up into the kind eyes of Reverend Clay. “So, you can come join me for our first one-on-one session if you like, or head back to your room and finish unpacking. If you just need some time to yourself to get settled in, that’s just fine.” He smiled his easy, lazy smile and Beau marvelled at his ability to phrase everything as though she had a choice - to give her a bit of power, control over what was happening to her during this time, when she’d never felt more powerless. 

Beau glanced to the side, where her father was sitting in awkward, lonely silence, as Jester had left him to go and talk to another student. Beau couldn’t say she blamed her; honestly, she wanted to get away from him as badly as Jester must have.

After arranging with Reverend Clay to meet him in his office in ten minutes, it was finally time for Beau to say goodbye to her father. Just as she was following him away from the canteen, she was stopped by a hand on her arm.

“I know you’re angry right now,” and it was Jester, looking more serious than she had since Beau first saw her, “but don’t, don’t be cruel when you say goodbye to him, okay? It’s okay to be mad at him but remember that you don’t hate him, or you wouldn’t be here right?”

Beau turned her back on Jester, and her unwelcome words. Jester may have been here a while, and seen many other disciples regret the harsh words to their parents, but there was only one parent Beau didn’t hate, and she hadn’t even cared enough to come. 

Her father stood, feet shoulder width apart, one hand clasped in the other and tucked against the small of his back. It was what Beau liked to call his ‘Over-Compensation Pose’, and she knew he stood like that when he was uncomfortable, humiliated, or feeling small. She wondered what it was this time - was he uncomfortable leaving his only child here, when she would clearly rather be anywhere else? Or was he embarrassed, mortified, that he even had any reason to be here in the first place?

“I really do think this place will be good for you, Beauregard.” He raised a hand as if to place it on her shoulder, before thinking better of it and moving it behind his back again. A part of Beau wished he would touch her, so she would have an excuse to smack his hand away. “Your mother and I, we want you to get better. So you can have a normal life-”

Raring for a fight, Beau cut him off. “Don’t try and act like this is about me. This has nothing to do with me - not really. You only care about your precious reputation, and how bad it’ll look on you to have a homo daughter. And mom -” her voice cracked and Beau paused, clearing her throat, embarrassed that she had shown him even a fraction of the misery she was feeling, attempting to smother it with her rage. “She didn’t even care enough to be here. You should just go, I know you never wanted to be here in the first place.”

He sighed, seemingly defeated, and pulled open his car door. “If that’s what you want, Beauregard. I hope you’ll write to us when you get communication privileges.”

And now, faced with the prospect of her final connection to home driving away and leaving her here, she was suddenly filled with this desperate need for him to stay. She couldn’t stop herself from trying. “Wait, don’t go, dad I can’t deal with...just, please don’t, I…” She swallowed, feeling tears thick in her throat, looking desperately into his icy eyes, “Please don’t leave me here.”

She knew her final, desperate plea had fallen on deaf ears when he turned his eyes to the ground and sighed his familiar, disappointed, I-expected-more-from-you-Beauregard sigh. “You haven’t left me much of a choice. Maybe if you had better control of yourself, you wouldn’t be here. Goodbye, Beauregard. I’ll see you on your Christmas holiday.”

And then he was gone, a cluster of blurry red lights moving further and further into the distance. Beau stood there, staring at the road, until the sobs building in her chest hardened into heavy bricks of anger, and the dewy tears in her eyes turned to ice in her veins. Stony-faced, she turned and headed back toward her new home.

*

Beau stared down at the paper in her hand, as Reverend Clay’s soft voice echoed around her. On it was a poorly photocopied, basic drawing of a small steamboat, dwarfed by an iceberg beside it. On the paper, in Reverend Clay’s predictably tidy scrawl, he had annotated _Beauregard’s friends, family, and society_ over the boat and _Beauregard’s same-sex attraction disorder_ over the iceberg. 

“I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘tip of the iceberg’ before,” Reverend Clay was saying, helpfully tapping the aforementioned frozen water with the tip of his pen. “We’re going to use this simple diagram as a visual representation of what’s going on with you.”

Anger at her father still simmering under the surface, Beau couldn’t help but sneer. “You mean my ‘homosexual tendencies’?”

“There’s no such thing as a homosexual _,_ Beauregard.” Ophelia Mardune sat next to Reverend Clay, an oppressive cold presence next to his sunny demeanour. Beau had the honour of the matriarch of Christ’s Sanctuary attending her first one-on-one session. She sat, straight-backed and perfectly made up, long black hair swept up in a tidy bun, not a hair out of place - the picture of femininity. Everything Beau was here to become. “Homosexuality is a cleverly crafted lie, created by the supposed gay rights movement as an excuse for their giving into sin. You are simply struggling with the temptation of sin, as are all of God’s children. You are just unfortunate and weak enough to have given into it.”

Ophelia had not taken her eyes off Beau’s during this whole meeting and, for the first time, Beau found she could no longer look at her, and dropped her eyes back to the paper instead. The carefully cultivated rage within her waned under the force of that stare, and she found herself picking at the skin on the side of her nail.

“But that’s not to say you’ve turned your back on God, because He forgives all sinners.” Reverend Clay leant forwards, the movement causing Beau to look up from her folded hands and into his kind eyes. “See, I myself suffered with same-sex attraction just a few years ago. I was like you. But, through my faith and the strength of those around me, I resisted temptation. And now, I use my experiences to help people in similar situations, to overcome their SSA.”

Beau was stunned. He spoke about it so easily, comfortable discussing his past in front of Ophelia in a way that she hadn’t expected.

“So this place, it like fixed you, or whatever?” Beau didn’t believe him - she could practically hear Keg in her mind _no matter how much he prays or how much pussy he eats, you can’t just stop being gay. That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of this works!_ But Keg wasn’t there, wasn’t sitting opposite a reformed homosexual and a cruel psychologist, being asked to pick apart her biggest insecurities to cure one of the few parts of herself that she actually didn’t mind.

“We don’t really like using the word fixed - you kids aren’t broken and we aren’t fixing you, we’re just helping you find your way back to Christ. You’ve just lost your way, is all, once you open yourself back up to Christ and what he can do for you, your faith will help you escape the temptation you’ve been struggling with.”

“Now back to the purpose of this meeting. We use the iceberg metaphor because it is a simple way of showing that your same sex attraction disorder, what your family and friends have seen and are so afraid of, is just what they see on the surface. The root cause of your SSA, is much larger and has more lasting implications. There is a reason that the sin within you has manifested in that particular way, and we want to help you discover what those reasons are, to help you combat those sinful desires.” Ophelia crossed one leg over the other, pointing her perfectly painted toes toward the ground, blood red nail varnish shining in the afternoon sun that streamed through the window. “Now, what do you think lies below your surface?”

Beau instinctually rolled her eyes, and Ophelia latched onto it, like a wolf to a lamb’s throat, her voice growing louder, harsher, less controlled with each word. “We cannot help you if you are not first willing to help yourself. Why even come here, if you’re not willing to put the effort in to try and fight these attractions? Do you want a normal life? Do you want to make your parents proud? Isn’t that why you came here?” She leant forward, then, suddenly inches from Beau’s face. “These questions are not rhetorical, Beauregard.”

Beau inhaled deeply, filling her lungs in an effort to stop herself from shouting, screaming at Ophelia _I don’t want any of this, I never wanted any of this, I just want to go home, and be myself, and for no-one to hate me for that, and for my mom to be able to look me in the eyes again._ Gripping the paper in her hands so tight she was afraid she might rip it, Beau breathed out, releasing all her frustrated and desperately sad words in that breath, and chose the only question she could answer honestly. “Yes, I want my parents to be proud of me. I want my mom to be proud of me when I go home.”

Ophelia seemed pleased with Beau’s candor, offering her a small smile. “Good. Well we have a long way to go, but I’m confident that you will progress in this programme, as long as you are receptive to our techniques. Now, go and work on your iceberg. You have a long way to go.”

*

**Calianna Mordsson**

Too much involvement in masculine sports (specifically basketball) causing gender confusion.

Lack of female role model growing up.

Lost mom at a young age - lack of physical/emotional connection.

Distant dad causing further lack of connection, so sought connection through SSA.

Beau found it hard to picture sweet, shy Calianna, covered in blue facepaint and decked out in the latest Shaq O’Neal jersey, cursing out a referee for a bad call. Looking around at the carefully replicated scripture pinned up around the iceberg, Beau couldn’t help but wonder if Calianna’s aloof father was a preacher of some kind. One in particular caught her eye: _1 Corinthians 1:27-29. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him._ Beau could imagine sweet Calianna, bible fit to bursting with post-its tucked between her knees, obsessively underlining passages, hidden beneath her quilt after lights out; desperately searching for a solution to her homosexuality within the words of God. 

**Jester Lavorre-Luong**

Exposure to sexual deviancy at a young age.

No Christian upbringing.

Physical trauma causing emotional issues.

No one male role model growing up, so unaware of what a healthy relationship between a man and a woman looked like.

Curious about Jester’s cryptic upbringing, Beau studied the other articles on her corkboard. It was coated in photographs - candid shots of other disciples; the sunset shining off the lake; photos of the treetops that must have been taking from the top of the water tower; Reverend Clay playing his guitar, surrounded by the smiling faces of his little sinners. Each photo had a date and time pencilled neatly in the corner. There were no pictures of Jester’s life before. In amongst the relentless pictures of Christ’s Sanctuary were beautiful sketches torn from a notebook: of the forest, deer, horses, and a lovely likeness to Jester herself; each one signed with a little smiley face at the top of the page. Beau resolved to find out more about Jester as soon as she could.

**Caleb Widogast**

Unstable upbringing

Emotional trauma

Other sins leaving me open to temptation

Beau frowned, annoyed at how unhelpful this particular iceberg was proving to be. Her endless curiosity was piqued further when she realised that this mysterious Caleb, much like herself, had yet to earn decoration privileges. There wasn’t so much as a picture on his nightstand. Just a pile of textbooks on his desk. Exasperated, she turned to his roommate’s wall for further inspiration. 

**Fjord Running Bear**

Lack of physical affection from dad causing problems with SSA.

Mom caused gender confusion through encouraging Yanktonais’ beliefs - winkte.

Broken home - 

“What are you doing?”

Beau cursed, jumping back from the iceberg sheet she had been studying. Back of her neck burning, she turned toward the confused voice behind her. Fjord Running Bear, one of the most objectively pretty people Beau had ever met, stood silhouetted in the doorway, an old _Back to the Future_ baseball cap casting shadows across his delicate features. 

“Sorry! Sorry I, uh, needed some ideas for this stupid thing.” She waved her own, blank sheet towards him like a piece offering.

Fjord side-stepped around Beau, throwing himself down onto his bed and pulling a small notepad out of his pocket. “Just say something like ‘sports made me gay’. They eat that shit up.” He began sketching in his little book, and Beau realised there was a familiar, earthy smell emanating from his denim jacket.

“So where do you get it?” One of Fjord’s eyebrows ticked up, and Beau clarified: “The weed.”

A slow, lazy smile spread across his face and he leant back on his elbows, sketchbook forgotten in his lap. “Well aren’t you full of surprises, Beauregard Lionett. You can get in on it, if you want. You got any money?”

All those months cramping her legs for the Chinese place down the road had paid off - she’d always been paid in cash, and had rolled the notes up thin and hidden them in her luggage, unsure of why she’d need them but knowing she didn’t want it all confiscated. “Some. How much have you got?”

“Keen, aren’t you? I don’t blame you; you’re gonna need weed, at least, to survive this place with your head still screwed on straight.”

“Oh, nothing about me is straight,” Beau smirked, “that’s kinda why I’m here.”

Fjord laughed, a carefree, fresh-high laugh. “Fair. Next time you see me and Jester heading to the water tower out back, feel free to join us. Just make sure you ain’t followed.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Beau mock saluted Fjord, earning a peace sign in return, and spun on her heel to high-tail it out of there before she could earn a lecture on the dangers of pre marital sex from Ophelia. Before she could step out of the room, however, she spotted a pair of muddy running shoes peeking out from under Fjord’s bed. 

Prior to being sent here, Beau had been trying to work on her people skills. She’d never been much of a talker, and had been described as distant and bitchy more times than she could count. She knew this place would be unbearable if she tried to take it on on her own, so she squared her shoulders and turned back toward Fjord. 

“Would you mind if I went running with you sometime? I’m big into martial arts but, obviously punching things is manly enough it made me a sexual deviant, so. Gotta get my frustrations out somehow, right?”

“‘Course you can. And if you ever want to spar, I’ve done a bit of wrestling before. If you think you could take me on, that is.”

Beau grinned, “oh please, a pansy like you? No problem.”

Fjord barked a laugh. “My ancestor have been warriors for hundreds of years Beau, it’s in my blood. I ain’t scared of you.”

“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Beau took off, then, rapping her knuckles against the hollow walls as she went. With people like Fjord and Jester here, maybe she’d make it through these next few months after all.


	3. We'll Be Walking on Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from: I Found God by Mainland

That night, Beau dreamt that she was running through the forests surrounding the compound, Fjord on her left and Jester on her right. They were sprinting, vaulting over logs, laughing and nudging one another. The shore of the lake sparkled up ahead, and they cannon balled into it - 

And then she was alone, drowning in a sea of tempestuous waves, desperately clawing her way to air before being pulled back under. Her hands managed to find purchase on a slippery surface that cut like glass, and she hauled herself out of the water. It took her a moment to realise what she was standing on: the surface of an iceberg. A shadow appeared in the fog surrounding her, and, squinting, she realised that it was an old fishing boat. The ice beneath her began to melt, the precious island she was kneeling on rapidly shrinking around her. Jumping to her feet, she frantically waved her hands above her head, yelling out, praying for the people on the boat to hear her. 

A man on the boat turned to look at her, and she realised it was her father. He turned a giant spotlight towards her, blinding her - 

Beau blinked owlishly against the harsh light as it swept over her face. Norda, the short woman who wandered the corridors of their little prison, turned her torch off, and Beau heard her march off, no doubt to wake another unfortunate soul with her blazing torch light. 

Beau turned over, grumbling, having been woken for the second time that night. She hated that their door had to stay open at all times, that all she could hear were Calianna’s whistling snores, that Norda poked her nosey head in every few hours to make sure they weren’t acting sinfully. _If our keepers were so worried about us fucking each other, why even bother making us share rooms?_

She turned onto her back and glared at the ceiling, cold all over from the memory of her dream. Beau had never put much stock in dreams, they were often nonsense and confusing, but this one felt different. Significant. And she didn’t know what to make of it. 

*

October, 1992

The leaves of the great oaks encompassing Christ’s Sanctuary had turned to brilliant oranges, yellows and reds, drifting to the earth and carpeting it in a kaleidoscope of colour. 

Enjoying the crunch of crisp leaves beneath her feet, Beau strolled down toward the glittering lake; taking the winding path through the trees. Hands deep in the pockets of her baggy jeans that Ophelia always frowned at, she clicked play on her Walkman, relishing in her small rebellion as the first notes of a _Bikini Kill_ song blared through her headphones. 

Arriving at the small jetty that edged out into the lake, Beau kicked her trainers off, jumping up to crouch on one of the logs that held up the jetty like Ralph Macchio in _Karate Kid._ Taking advantage of the fact that Ophelia wasn’t around to tell her off, Beau pulled her jumper over her head, leaving her in a sports bra, and leapt off the log; landing in the press up position, and began her workout routine. 

A conveniently nearby tree served as an adequate pull up bar, and Beau put her body through its paces; it had been a few days since she’d been able to carry out a proper strength workout, as Ophelia had decided it was ‘too masculine’ and promptly banned it. Thus, Beau could only exercise as she pleased when there was no one around to stop her. 

After about fifteen minutes of brutal exercise, she flopped down onto the dock below, feet swinging over the lip of the jetty. The sweat on her skin cooling her rapidly, Beau tugged her thick jumper back on, before easing her feet into the chilled water, sharp pinpricks of ice sparkling up the soles of her feet, stabbing up into her calves. 

She leant back on her elbows, the rough wood of the dock digging into her arms despite the thick woollen jumper she was wrapped in. The sky above was a pale blue, an indicator of the rapidly dropping temperatures, but her pounding heart and the waxen sun provided enough warmth for Beau to brave a brief dip in the lake. 

The compound behind her was silent, for once, as her fellow delinquents had all taken the Shame Bus into nearby Trostenwold, leaving Beau here alone with only kind Nila, Christ’s Sanctuary’s resident teacher, for company. She relished the quiet - the only sounds she could hear were the slight ripples as she stretched her feet; the creaking of the trees around her; the calls of crossbills and goshawks circling far above her. It was peaceful, and calming, something she sorely needed after the whirlwind of the past few weeks. 

Beau hadn’t known what to expect of Christ’s Sanctuary before she came here: she’d imagined a group of depressed teens, sat in a circle holding hands, singing kumbaya and reliving all their childhood trauma, having every aspect of their lives brutally pulled apart by some old homophobe. While that had, to a certain extent, been her experience so far, she’d been surprised by just how much she had been enjoying her stay. Yes, she missed her friends and her town, and even - despite everything - her parents and Vorsah. And, yes, constantly being told she was a dirty sinner wasn’t something she particularly relished but, there were good things here too. And that was in large part due to the people here.

Jester had become, and Beau cringed at herself for thinking it, Beau’s best friend. She was sweet, and funny, and mischievous, a constant ray of light to lift Beau’s spirits when the oppressive weight of this place threatened to crush her.

And Fjord, kind, sarcastic Fjord, with his soft voice and easy Southern charm, never failed to make Beau laugh, even when her rage got the better of her and she would lash out at him, or Jester, or the vast sky above her. 

It was after her second one-on-one session, when she first realised that Jester and Fjord were going to be integral to her surviving the Sanctuary. She met with Ophelia, who managed to spot and subsequently rip apart every bullshit thing she’d written on her iceberg. Without Reverend Clay there to play mediator, it became clear that Beau and Ophelia were similar in their tempers. Too similar, in the way that Beau and her father had always been, and she hated that - hated that she was anything like these awful people, that it was entirely likely that she would grow and become _just like them_ , and that fear manifested itself as anger. 

The first, and at that point only, statement on her iceberg was ‘too much time playing sports’; she hadn’t quite quoted Fjord verbatim but, despite perusing the others’ icebergs and knowing what she had to say, she couldn’t quite bring herself to write down every aspect of her childhood that she’d actually enjoyed just for this bitch to scrutinise and critique and _ruin_ it. 

“You need to examine what about the specific sports you played may have encouraged your inappropriate desires. You began with netball, a sport involving very little clothing, before moving onto wrestling and martial arts; both of which involved lots of improper contact with other girls. It is entirely possible that, after netball encouraged your deviant thoughts, you chose wrestling specifically because you could then touch other girls whilst avoiding any suspicion or consequences as a result.” Beau had, predictably, taken offence to the implication that she chose to get involved with martial arts to get away with being some kind of sexual predator, and promptly lost her temper. She’d wanted to show Ophelia just what she’d learned in her years of MMA training, and beat the God-loving shit right out of her.

“Oh that makes loads of fucking sense yeah, seeing other girls legs made me gay then I decided to punch girls to get myself off - well fucking done, Oprah, you’ve figured out why I’m the way I am.” Seething sarcasm seemed a safer alternative to physical assault, even if it was significantly less satisfying.

Ophelia’s eyes had narrowed, sharp and cold as shards of flint. “Or perhaps a part of you subconsciously recognised this attraction when you were young. You were afraid of it, your fear became anger, and you took that anger out on the very people who you blamed for your solicitous thoughts. You are a very angry person, Beauregard, that much is clear to me even from the limited time we’ve spent together.” Satisfied with the way Beau’s jaw twitched and fists clenched, Ophelia sat back, adding almost as an afterthought: “And please do not swear, it is exceptionally unbecoming in a woman.”

Needless to say, that exchange had left Beau full of unresolved rage - which she hated, because it meant Ophelia had read her correctly because she _was_ full of anger and the only way she could get rid of it was punching and fighting but that wasn’t because she hated women, right that’s not what it was about she was just so _mad_ all the time and she didn’t know why and oh God Ophelia was right and if she was right about this maybe she was right about everything else -

“Beau!” Fjord had actually had to place his hand over Beau’s mouth as a physical barrier to stop her spiralling rant. “Take a deep breath with me. Good, and another. Just breathe with me, breathe with me.”

When Beau had finally had enough and ran out of the ‘Speaking Room’, she had stormed to the shore of the lake, where Jester had found her; seething and livid and ready to smash the dock to splinters, until it was tiny pieces of wood as small as Ophelia had made her feel. 

“I’m sorry,” Jester had taken the bobble from Beau’s hair, and begun to gently run her fingers through it. Beau felt her body, wound tight like a coiled spring, relax slightly at the calming motion. “We should have warned you about one-on-ones with Ophelia. She’s kind of…”

Beau tugged Fjord’s hand away, finally in control of her errant thoughts. “An offensive homophobe?”

“Yeah. When RC isn’t there the one-on-ones can get pretty intense. She’s not afraid to tell it the way she sees it, and she’s got some pretty shitty opinions.” 

“You’re telling me.” Beau cracked her knuckles, muscles still tense, red hot rage still coursing through her veins. “God, is there anything to punch round here?”

“Lucky for you, Ophelia is so desperate for me to identify as a boy that she actually let me buy these on our last trip to town.” Fjord said, pulling a pair of boxing gloves and mitts from his bag. 

The group had made their way to the barn, away from prying eyes, and Beau had taken her frustrations out on poor Fjord’s hands. When they had been at it for half an hour and Fjord needed a break, but Beau was still vibrating with energetic anger, she turned to some tightly packed bales of hay, kicking and pummelling and eventually just ripping the straw out, finally collapsing on the hay-strewn floor. She lay there, chest heaving, with frustrated tears threatening to fall, and Jester sat cross-legged beside her, casually popped her leg off and produced, from a hidden cavity inside, a joint and lighter. Propping her leg up on the wall beside her and leaning back on her hands, she passed Beau the spliff and told her story. 

Jester had been born on a commune that practiced free love and polyamory - as such, her father could have been one of any number of men. She was raised predominantly by her mother, though the commune had its own little creche, and the children were looked after by everyone. Life there was very simple, and the members lived off the land, selling the organic vegetables they cultivated to buy supplies they couldn’t grow themselves. Jester had loved it, the freedom of it, the feeling of never being lonely: summers spent running barefoot through the fields with a horde of other shrieking, laughing children; winters spent telling stories around huge fires, huddled up by her mother’s side. 

But then, one day, her mother had been working at the vegetable stall, and she met someone. A businessman, whose name Jester refused to utter, instead insisting on calling him Stiff. Stiff was completely, intoxicatingly boring but, over the course of several visits to the commune, her mother loved him enough to drag them both away from their home. And Jester’s life changed forever. 

Stiff was Christian, so of course she and her mother had to be too. In the beginning Jester had tolerated Stiff, for her mother’s sake, but the one thing she totally, absolutely would not compromise on was who she was. At the commune, there had been a lesbian couple, living in a cabin not far from Jester’s, so Jester had always known it was possible to fall in love with a woman; and when she grew older and began developing crushes on boys and girls, she knew that the personality of a person mattered more to her than their gender identity.

Unlike Beau, Jester hadn’t had one single event cause her to be sent to Sanctuary. Rather, she never hid her attractions, didn’t care to or try to, and when Stiff confronted her, she didn’t deny it. He offered her an ultimatum - ignore her attraction to women and stay with them, or go to Christ’s Sanctuary to be fixed. She fought back, telling him she didn’t need to be fixed, there was nothing wrong with her, pleading for her mom to fight for her too. She was upset, but not surprised, when her mother simply turned away. And that’s how she’d ended up at Christ’s Sanctuary.

“I’ve been here longer than everyone else,” Jester said through a fog of smoke. “It’ll be my two year anniversary in a week’s time.” 

“Fuck,” Beau awkwardly put her arm around Jester, pulling her into a quick side hug, earning a small smile. “I’m sorry, Jes, that’s terrible. How could your mom do that to you?”

“She always loved me, so much and I think that, she got scared? We always used to have these preachers come to the commune, tell us we were all sinners who were going to Hell and I think she started to believe them. One time, we were going to the shops and one of the preachers had just had a massive go at us, saying mom had damned me or whatever - and we crashed and this happened.” She tapped a finger against her knee, indicating the space beneath it. “And then Stiff came along and I guess she thought he could save us.”

A heavy silence settled over them, sunbeams shining through the gaps in the barn’s walls causing columns of light that dust danced through like confetti.

“Well I was thinking ‘bout telling you my life story, but Jester’s takes the cake. I thought mine was interesting but it looks like a shitty made-for-tv movie next to that fuckin blockbuster.”

And then they were laughing, full-belly, clutching their stomachs, tears-down-their-cheeks laughs, even though it wasn’t really funny at all - Jester’s story, what Fjord had said, the fact that they were here in the first place - none of it was funny. But all they could do was laugh.

Beau’s eyes flew open as a twig snapped in the woods nearby. She shot upright, pulling her numb feet out of the freezing lake, whipping around to scan the trees. Seeing nothing, she exhaled deeply, rubbing her eyes and looking to the darkening sky. She must have fallen asleep after her workout. 

Judging by the dim light around her, Beau reckoned it was late afternoon; the Shame bus would be back soon, and it would be time for group therapy. After being imprisoned at Christ’s Sanctuary for the past two weeks, Beau had finally earned the coveted right to attend group sessions, and her first one would be held after the rest of the delinquents returned from town. Sliding her frozen feet back into her trainers, Beau took off in the direction of the residential cabins. If she hurried, she’d have time for a quick shower before everyone returned.

In her rush, she didn’t notice the shadowy figures lurking at the treeline, watching her run back to the cabin. 

*

Group sessions were a new, special kind of torture. Beau had the misfortune of being placed in one run by Ophelia. The group consisted of her roommate Calianna; Rissa, who was a short, pinch-faced girl; quiet, broody Jamedi; and the scruffy, elusive Caleb. Each time they met for group chats, Beau had been informed by an excitable Calianna, they had to say a little prayer, word for word: _I will not pray for God to change me because God does not make mistakes and I am the one who is tempted by sin: change will come through God, but within me. I must be the change._

As it was her first session, Beau had the honour of saying this coveted little prayer. Every time she messed it up, she had to start over, which resulted in her saying the damn thing five times as she kept forgetting to include the word ‘because’. 

Support group had a way of making Beau get to know people well - uncomfortably well, ridiculously quickly. Over the course of the next few weeks, Beau found out more about the people in that room than she ever cared to know.

The most intriguing stories of all, however, were from the two people in the room who seemed to be holding back. 

Calianna’s long, sorry tale of growing up with a strict pastor for a father and a mother that died young, topped off with the endlessly saddening fact that her father hadn’t caught her in some sinful act; rather she had realised that she was thinking of other girls ‘impurely’ and went to him herself to confess and volunteer to attend Christ’s Sanctuary, was intriguing enough, without the added allure that she was obviously hiding something. Despite her poor social skills, Beau had always been excellent at reading people, and she could tell that Calianna wasn’t telling the whole truth. What was stranger, though, was that Ophelia appeared to know that Calianna wasn’t saying everything, and yet was letting her get away with it.

They were always encouraged to be brutally, mortifyingly honest during these sessions, as long as they didn’t ‘glorify their sins’ by going into too much detail about previous encounters or fantasies. Not that that was going to be an issue for sweet Calianna, who Beau couldn’t imagine had fantasised about more than holding hands with a girl before running to her father to confess.

Caleb, however, seemed to be holding back something that Ophelia didn’t know about - she hadn’t even seemed to realise he was skirting around something with half-truths.

Caleb undoubtedly had the most tragic, heartbreaking story of perhaps all of them. 

He first kissed a boy when he was eight years old, carefree and innocent, when they were playing cops and robbers in the woods. It had been chaste, a simple kiss between two young children. But he had known that this wasn’t normal; that boys only ever kissed girls on tv, men only married women, and had resolved not to tell his parents about it. He had never gotten the chance, however, to tell them; as when he had gotten home a police officer, smiling sadly and smelling strongly of tobacco, had been waiting for him.

In his naivety, he had thought that the officer was there for him - that someone had seen them in the woods, and he was in a world of trouble. When the officer told him why he was really there, all Caleb felt was relief. And then an immediate, intense surge of guilt.

His parents had been at their cabin in the Southern forests of Montana, the police officer said, when the wildfire began. They had been asleep, unaware of the fire that raged around them, destroying everything in its path. Including the cabin, and including Caleb’s mom and dad. 

He had been kissing a boy as his parents were consumed by a deadly inferno. 

His grandmother died just a few short weeks after that, and Caleb had been thrust into the corrupt foster system of Rexxentrum. He never went into great detail about specific experiences within the various care homes he stayed at, but it was not difficult to imagine why exactly he went onto become a drug user. 

Caleb, like most of the other disciples, came to be at Christ’s Sanctuary through an uncomfortable, uncertain mix of free will and force. He had been going through withdrawal, starved and sleep deprived, bundled in an old, weathered coat, seeking shelter from the cold in the entryway of an old church. This particular congregation happened to contain one of Christ’s Sanctuary’s donors, who had given to Caleb the tantalising offer of food, warmth and a bed. All he needed to give in return was the will and strength to change for God. 

At the time, the offer had seemed irresistible, and Caleb would have done anything to get off the streets. And here he was.

Occasionally, Ophelia would attempt to ‘coax Caleb out of his shell’, as she put it. 

“You won’t get anything out of these sessions if you are not willing to open yourself up completely to the experience.” She had said, more than once, in an attempt to get Caleb to open up more about his time in the care homes and how he’d ended up getting mixed up in drugs.

He point blank refused though, his soft voice barely audible even in the heavy silence of the Speaking Room, a slight edge bleeding into his words despite his forced politeness. He always said the same thing: “No, I am done with speaking now, thank you. Someone else can have a turn.” And he would look to one of the other disciples. 

Beau had always been a naturally inquisitive person, her endless curiosity getting her into trouble on more than one occasion, and could not understand why the other disciples always listened to Caleb, and would immediately launch into a rendition of their own sordid tales. Or at least she had wondered, until their third group session, and Caleb had turned to her as he said it.

She’d never really interacted with him before, and he had always avoided eye contact whenever they had, so Beau had not expected what she’d seen behind the usual detached facade of his empty gaze. Beneath the surface of his cobalt eyes lay a tangible pain, and he stared at her with such open grief - a desperate plea for everyone to stop looking at him, for Ophelia to stop picking him apart with her every word - and Beau couldn’t help but take pity on him, stepping up to tell her own story, despite feeling as though she were taking a blow for him when Ophelia’s cold glare turned to her.

Still, when the session finally ended and Caleb made his usual beeline for the door, Beau couldn’t help but follow him as though there were a thread between them, winding and tangling, and she had to know what was at the end of it. 

She jogged after him, catching up to him just outside the door of the cabin. “Yo, Caleb, wait up!”

He stopped, turning towards her, the vulnerability that had been carved into his face not so long ago having morphed once again into something unreadable. 

Her curiosity rose like a vast wave within her, but before it could crest as it often did: with her blurting out a question she had not yet earned the answer to, she tamped it down. “I just wanted to say if you ever, you know, want someone to talk to properly, you can always come to me.” She shrugged, scuffing her toe against the ground. “God knows there’s a load of stuff I want to say sometimes, but Ophelia would crucify me if I actually said any of it so...yeah. Ever have anything that you want to get off your chest, you can come to me, okay?” 

She didn’t expect much of a response - outside of support group they’d hardly said two words to one another. So she was pleasantly surprised when Caleb nodded minutely. 

Not wanting to push him any further she nodded, grinning, and backed away with her hands in her pockets. “Cool. Maybe I’ll see you at lunch?” 

“Maybe.” Caleb turned then, walking off into the woods as she’d often seen him do. Perhaps one day soon, he’d tell her where he went. And perhaps, she’d made another friend in the unlikeliest of places. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, work's been crazy. Hope you enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> I know very little about the 90s or America, so apologies for any inaccuracies.  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
